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State Lawmakers Turn Focus to Road Funds, Abortion Restrictions

Now that lawmakers have decided to approve the existing redistricting maps for State Legislative and Congressional boundaries, discussing today turns to the other items Governor Rick Perry has placed on the agenda, namely road funding and abortion restrictions, 1200 WOAI news reports.

With just seven days left in the existing special session, Perry has slammed the door on allowing any more issues to be debated.

State Senator Robert Nichols is proposing allocating one half of all of the state's royalty money from the oil and gas industry to a special fund to build and maintain roads.

"You would crate, in effect, a revenue stream, maybe somewhat volatile in some years," Nichols said. "But in the foreseeable future it would work quite well, providing some $800 million to $900 million per year."

That money is now going into the state's Rainy Day Fund, and diverting it before it makes it into the fund would satisfy the concerns of Tea Party conservatives who say the Rainy Day Fund should not be raided at all, and also the concerns of Democrats, who say if the Rainy Day Fund is tapped, money should also be taken out for schools and social programs.

Lawmakers will also vote on several measures to regulate and restrict abortions, something Amy Hagstrom Miller, the director of the abortion provider Whole Women's Health blasted.

"These laws are specifically crafted, all of them, to reduce women's access to abortion in Texas, plain and simple," she said. "The bills do nothing to reduce the number of abortions."

Supporters say the measures are needed specifically to protect women's health, and protect women from dying in unregulated abortion mills like the one that was shut down in Pennsylvania